How Good Are Those Young-Earth
Arguments?

A Close Look at Dr. Hovind's List of
Young-Earth Arguments and Other Claims

Dr.
Hovind (G1): The assumption that the geologic column is
a base from which to calibrate the C-14 dates is not
wise.

G1. With a half-life of only 5730 years,
carbon-14 dating has nothing to do with dating the
geological ages! Whether by sloppiness or gross ignorance,
Dr. Hovind is confusing the carbon-14 "clock" with other
radiometric "clocks."

The only thing in the geologic record which has anything
to do with calibrating carbon-14 dating is the coal from
the Carboniferous Period. Being ancient, the C-14 content
has long since decayed away and that makes it useful in
"zeroing" laboratory instruments. It's just one of the
tricks that have been used to make the work a little more
precise.

Dr.
Hovind (G2): The entire geologic column is based on the
assumption that evolution is true.

Andrew MacRae deals with claims that the geologic
column is just circular reasoning.

G2. If Dr. Hovind would take the trouble to do a
little reading from something other than creationist
publications he would not make such an outrageous
statement. I believe he has confused the use of index
fossils with evolution. One creationist editor, who is more
mellow than his unfortunate statement suggests, phrased the
argument thus:

Unfortunately the geologists date the rocks as the
paleontologists tell them to. Then the paleontologists use
the geologists' dates as evidence for the age of the
fossils! That's not science. That's just a game played by
dishonest scientists!

That passage might have come out of one of Henry Morris'
books, except that Morris usually avoids crude slander.

Perhaps Dr. Hovind is not aware of the fact that by 1815
the broad outlines of the geologic column from Paleozoic
times onward had been worked out by people who were mostly
creationist geologists. The relative order of the
strata was first determined by the principles of
stratification. (The principle of superposition was
recognized as early as 1669 by Steno.) Reverend Benjamin
Richardson and Reverend Joseph Townsend were a couple of
early geologists involved in this work. By 1830 Lyell's
famous textbook, Principles of Geology, came out.
The captain of the H.M.S. Beagle, a very strong Bible
believer, made it a point to have a copy of Lyell's book
for the ship's library. Obviously, even Lyell was not
pushing evolution at the time. Such was the age of the
great creationist geologists!

The principle of faunal succession in the geologic
record was established by direct observation as early as
1799 by William Smith. By the 1830's Adam Sedgwick and
Roderick Murchison established a correlation between the
various types of fossils and the rock formations in the
British Isles. It was found that certain fossils, now
referred to as index fossils, were restricted to a narrow
zone of strata. Studies done on the European continent soon
demonstrated the universal validity of index fossils. That
is, an index fossil corresponded to a very specific point
in the geologic column. Once the worth of index fossils had
been established on the basis of stratification studies,
they could logically be used to extend the correlation of
rock formations to other continents. At this point in time
they were simply a useful tool for correlating rock
formations.

One can hardly accuse these pioneers of evolutionary
prejudice. Nearly a half-century would pass before Darwin's
book, The Origin of Species, was published! By then,
the relative ages (order) of the geologic column had
already been worked out in some detail. Radiometric dating
would later confirm the relative ages of the strata and tie
them to absolute dates. (Far from being a rubber stamp,
radiometric dating would go on to revolutionize our
understanding of the Precambrian.) Thus, it became possible
to date strata directly from index fossils.

Note that evolution has nothing to do with how the index
fossils are used to date strata! Any kind of object clearly
restricted to a specific point in the geologic column would
do just fine. If green dice were found only in the middle
Ordovician strata, they would make excellent "index
fossils." Evolution should be seen as an explanation
of the faunal succession, a succession which was worked out
long before evolution dominated the scene. Evolution,
working in tandem with geologic ages, can explain
why we have index fossils, but evolution is
not needed to make the index fossils useful for
dating strata.

While we're on this subject, you might wish to know the
odds of arranging the Precambrian era, the seven geologic
periods of the Paleozoic (Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian,
Devonian, Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, Permian), the three
periods of the Mesozoic (Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous),
and the two periods of the Cenozoic (Paleogene, Neogene or
Tertiary, Quaternary) in their proper order by pure chance.
Your chances are 6.2 billion to one of getting the right
order for all thirteen. And, when you consider that each
period can also be divided into "upper, middle, and lower,"
the odds of arranging them in the correct order by pure
chance become astronomical. Radiometric dating has
passed that severe test! It has correctly placed the
Cambrian between the Precambrian and the Ordovician, the
Ordovician between the Cambrian and the Silurian, the
Silurian between the Ordovician and the Devonian, and so
forth. (See Topic
A1 for claims of bad dates.)

Creationists, on the other hand, must explain to us how
sediment and rock laid down in a mere year can yield such
fantastic, orderly differences in radiometric ages. This
poses a fatal problem whether one believes in the accuracy
of radiometric dating or not! One would think that the
flood sediments (gathered from the four corners of the old
antediluvian world) and their associated igneous rock
(formed during the flood) would all register very little
radiometric age. At the very least we would expect random
fluctuations if the radiometric methods were totally at
sea. Whyshould the percentage of lead to
uranium in zircon crystals (the key to ordinary
uranium-lead, radiometric dating) depend on which geologic
period they are found in? If most of the geologic column
were created during Noah's flood, would it really matter
whether a zircon crystal was found in Cambrian strata or
Cretaceous strata, in Jurassic strata or Tertiary strata?
Noah's flood might just as easily deposit the same crystal
in one place as another.

Thus, we have a mystery. Pressure has nothing to do with
it, and zircon crystals all have about the same density as
their total lead content is small. Just what is it that a
Cambrian stratum has which a Cretaceous stratum lacks? What
does the Jurassic strata have that the Tertiary strata do
not? If rock type mattered then we would expect a zircon
crystal's lead content to vary dramatically within the
Cambrian or Cretaceous strata according to their local rock
types. No, that's not what we observe. How about neutrinos
or cosmic rays? Neutrinos penetrate the earth so easily
that they would affect all strata more or less equally, to
the extent that they affect anything at all. Cosmic rays,
on the other hand, don't penetrate that far into the earth
to begin with, so we can rule them out. The depth of
burial, itself, has little to do with our mystery. In some
parts of the world the Cretaceous is found deeper than is
the Cambrian in other parts of the world. The depth at
which either is found can vary dramatically. In the Grand
Canyon area the Cambrian lies beneath a huge column of
strata; in California's Mojave Desert portions of the
Cambrian are exposed at the surface.

For the young-earth creationist, this is an
unsolvable mystery, a mystery with parallels in each
of the radiometric clocks used by geologists. The
potassium-argon, rubidium-strontium, samarium-neodymium,
luteium-hafnium, rhenium-osmium, thorium-lead, and the two
uranium-lead dating methods all point to the same amazing
fact. The ratio between tiny amounts of radioactive
elements and their decay products have this uncanny ability
to determine which strata a rock will appear in! What is
this magic ingredient that each of the geologic periods
have which affects rocks and zircon crystals so? For those
who believe that each of the geologic periods were laid
down in days or weeks by Noah's flood, the mystery has no
intelligent answer. For the rest of us, the answer is as
plain as daylight. The answer to our riddle is time. The
Cambrian has simply been around a lot longer than the
Cretaceous, and the radioactive uranium in its zircon
crystals has had more time to decay into lead. The same
radioactive elements in different geologic periods will
have decayed by different amounts.

Even creationists realize that time is the only answer,
but they give that answer a strange twist. They imagine
that the radioactive elements decayed much faster in the
past! Such claims are mere flights of fantasy with no basis
in fact or theory (see Topic
R2). Problems abound. For instance, there are
many boundaries (unconformities) in the geologic strata
that exhibit a sharp change in radiometric age. Thus,
zircons that are formed at about the same time in Noah's
flood (from intruded magma close to each side of an
unconformity, if such quick formation were even possible)
would exhibit impossible differences in the decay of their
uranium. Figure 2 explores an
additional problem that pops up when one monkeys around
with the radioactive decay rates.

A few calculations will rule out a fast radioactive
decay rate before Noah's flood, thus firming up our
intuitive feeling. Based on the present decay rate of
U-238, the Cambrian period began about 570 million years
ago. Since then the amount of uranium-238 has been reduced
a bit (to 91.544% of itself) by radioactive decay. Had the
decay rates remained high after the flood or in its later
stages, the zircon crystals in the more recent strata (the
last strata laid down by Noah's flood) would have "aged"
considerably, which is not the case. Furthermore,
the zircon crystals had to be created during Noah's flood
in order to be "aged" according to the strata in which they
were associated. It is too much to assume that each one
just happened to be deposited in the right strata.
Therefore, at the time of Noah's flood the decay rate had
to be at least fast enough to reduce the amount of
uranium-238 to 91.544% of itself in one year. If we
generously take that minimum decay rate, with no
thought of increasing it further as we look back into the
past, we can calculate how much uranium-238 had to be
present 1656 years before Noah's flood (when the earth was
created, according to Dr. Hovind). It turns out that the
amount of uranium-238 needed is 3.47 x 1063
times the amount of uranium-238 around at the start of
Noah's flood! In other words, if our entire solar system
were made of uranium-238 the quantity would not even begin
to suffice.

There is nothing like a few calculations to bring out
the absurdity in creationist thinking! We may safely rule
out the idea that the radioactive decay rates (for
uranium-238, and, by quantum mechanical implication, all
others) dwindled to their present values from high rates at
creation time. An initial U-238 decay rate high enough to
do creationists any good also leads to an absurd
conclusion. They must now assume that the decay rates were
low before Noah's flood, that they became phenomenally high
during the start of Noah's flood, and that they dropped to
normal after Noah's flood. Such tailor-made assumptions
will impress only idiots and fanatics, and there is yet
another problem worth mentioning.

Some of the material that has been radiometrically
dated, whose dates fully conform to the accepted ages of
their place in the geologic column, come from large masses
of once-molten rock. Those samples could not possibly have
cooled down in the course of a mere year no matter what.
(Try a million years!) Thus, any "aging" done on their
interior zircons had to occur, by creationist thinking,
after Noah's flood. Only then did the inner rock cool
enough so that those crystals finally formed. By
creationist reckoning, those crystals really formed after
the flood and should reflect the normal decay rates! That
is, their uranium-238 should show almost no decay at all.
To the contrary, their radiometric age is in good agreement
with the strata in which they were formed. Thus, even the
tailor-made assumptions, to which a few desperate
creationists might be inclined, come to naught.

In summary of these latter points, radiometric dating
has passed a severe test whereas young-earth creationism
flounders, in hopeless knots, on the basic facts of the
geologic record.

Creationist History of the
World
As Seen by a Zircon Crystal

(1) In the beginning God created zircon crystals, lots
of them, from pockets of molten rock. Fresh zircon crystals
are lead-free, because lead just doesn't fit in very well
with their crystallization process. Many new zircon
crystals, however, do contain uranium-238. Uranium-238 is
radioactive and eventually decays into lead, which is
trapped in the zircon crystal. Here, we see fresh zircon
crystals that have formed in the newly created earth. Their
uranium-238 has not yet decayed. All the rock here is
Precambrian.

(2) Noah's flood lays down the Cambrian (dark) strata.
Molten rock intruded into the Cambrian strata, and new
zircon crystals somehow formed quickly at that time. Today,
about 8.5% of their uranium-238 has decayed away. Many
creationists say that the radioactive decay rates were once
much greater than they are today.

(3) Noah's flood lays down its last sediments. Notice,
in each of the succeeding layers, that the zircon crystals
formed have lost less and less of their uranium (as
measured today). The radioactive decay rate must have been
dropping fast!

(4) Today's world. Mountains have pushed up, the polar
caps have formed, and various other adjustments have
happened. Those zircon crystals that formed right after
Noah's flood show practically no loss of uranium-238.
Strange, this last stage represents about 4,400 years (out
of 6000+) by creationist reckoning and, yet, the uranium in
its zircon crystals is essentially intact! Perhaps, by the
time Noah's flood started, the decay rate had started to
slow down dramatically. As the last sediments were laid
down near the end of the year-long flood, that rate must
have all but stopped compared to its primordial speed.

But wait! If the decay rate only started dropping at the
time of the flood, then it s should have done a job on
those Precambrian zircons. If 8% of a zircon's uranium was
lost during just the Cambrian (after which the decay rate
must drop rapidly), then there shouldn't be any uranium
left in those Precambrian zircons! After all, radioactive
decay has had only a fraction of a year (at its full
strength) to work on the Cambrian crystals; it has had up
to 1656 years to work on those Precambrian crystals! Yet,
they still have a fair amount of uranium.

That means the radioactive decay rate must have been
feeble before Noah's flood. It then skyrockets at the start
of Noah's flood and drops dramatically even as that flood
rumbles on! We might imagine a radioactive decay rate that
was extremely high in the uncertain past, one that has
dropped to normal values via some sensible curve. However,
to imagine a rate that skyrockets from near-normalcy to
extreme values just as Noah's flood gets underway, one
which then decays precipitously only to suddenly level off
near its present value, is clearly a case of special
pleading. If we should forget ourselves and let this point
slide, we still have all that radiation being released in a
fraction of a year, radiation that conventional geology
attributes to billions of years! In case you missed the
point, that means the radiation would have been billions of
times more concentrated than today! Noah and crew would
have fried in one, giant nuclear reactor!!

There is, of course, still the minor matter of
explaining in detail how molten rock might be injected into
sediments raining out of Noah's flood while leaving the
patterns actually found. Also, decent zircon crystals could
hardly form if that molten rock cooled too quickly.

The alternative is to imagine that those zircons were
formed elsewhere and just happened to sort themselves out
during the flood, and that they just happened to deposit
themselves into the right strata to give the appearance of
successive ages!

Figure 2

Â

Dr.
Hovind (G3): The fictitious geologic column (invented
in the 1800's to discredit the Bible) does not exist
anywhere in the world except in textbooks.

G3. Oh, sure, those early creationists invented
the geologic column to discredit the Bible! That just makes
loads of sense, doesn't it? Is it possible that Dr. Hovind,
who taught earth science for 13 out of his 15 years as a
high school science teacher, doesn't understand the concept
behind the geologic column? The thought boggles the mind!
On top of that, Dr. Hovind is simply wrong in his claim
that no place on Earth has a full set of representative
strata.

John Woodmorappe, a young-earth creationist, has
admitted that representative strata from the Cambrian to
the Tertiary have been discovered lying in their proper
order in Iran, by the Caspian, the Himalayas, Indonesia,
Australia, North Africa, Canada, South America, Japan,
Mexico, and the Philippines! (Woodmorappe,
1981, p.46-71. See especially, pp.62 & 67).
Furthermore, Glenn R. Morton, a professional geophysicist,
has reported that portions of Alaska also contain strata
representing all these geologic periods lying in their
exact textbook order. (Phone conversation between Edward
Babinski and Glenn Morton, as relayed to me.) Sometime
later he identified three wells for me in McKenzie County,
North Dakota, which had penetrated all the geologic periods
in their correct order. Morton also indicated that the East
China Sea, the Juixi (pronounced jewshi) basin in China and
many more areas could be added to the list. So, the
geologic column definitely does exist! That is to
say, there are a number of locations where every period of
the geologic column from the Cambrian on up is present and
in proper order. (Wherever we find relatively undisturbed
areas without any of the obvious signs of mountain
building, that strata is always in the textbook order. Some
of the geologic periods may be missing, either because they
were never laid down at that location or because they have
since eroded away. However, the relative order of
those present is preserved. See Topics G4b and G4c for a discussion of missing and
out-of-order strata.)

Showing that the geologic column is fully represented in
various places is not my main concern here. Far more
important is Dr. Hovind's fundamental misunderstanding of
the geologic column, which seems to be shared by many
creationists.

The geologic column is an ideal, complete,
chronological reference frame that defines the
status of those strata having (more or less) a worldwide
distribution or correlation in time. For example, local
strata that can be traced to places where it lies above
strata of the Mississippian Period, and to other places
where it lies below strata of the Permian, or which can be
dated or identified as belonging to that interval, is
defined as belonging to the Pennsylvanian (American) or
Upper Carboniferous (European) Period. Of course, we are
assuming the usual order here. Allowances must be made for
overturned strata, etc.

In the geologic column (American version), the
Pennsylvanian Period is the sixth period in the Paleozoic
era and is characterized in many places by great coal-,
oil-, and gas-bearing deposits. It contains the record of
the first reptiles, etc., etc. The geologic column is like
a yearbook with the pictures of all the graduating students
in it. No one expects that every one of those students will
show up for a particular dance! Neither does the geologist
expect that some locality must exhibit all the known
strata.

The point is that the earth's strata has a very definite
chronological order to it, and that order, taken at its
most complete, ideal form, serves as an abstract
reference frame for defining the actual strata of each
locality. The question as to whether some locality has all
the periods in the geologic column is only of academic
interest; it has no bearing on the fitness of the
concept.

That is usually what is meant when one refers to the
geologic column. If not that, then the phrase is
simply being pressed, rather loosely, as another name for
the strata of some locality or localities.

Hovind
(G4): Poly-strata fossils, missing layers, layers out of
order, misplaced fossils, and layers in reverse order all
invalidate the geologic column.

G4. None of these charges amount to a hill of
discarded beans. We can't examine every such claim,
but we can look at a few examples.

a)
Poly-strata fossils.

By this, Dr. Hovind means fossils which cross several
strata. Usually that means fossilized, vertical tree
trunks. Creationists are attacking a straw man. No
geologist claims that every little stratum requires
thousands of years to be laid down! The strata associated
with polystrate fossils invariably show evidence of
relatively rapid deposition.

'Polystrate' trees show every sign of extremely rapid
burial, generally when rivers flood over their banks.

An example of this very thing is given by Dunbar and
Waage (Dunbar
& Waage, 1969, p.52). They show a photo of the
Yahtse River area in Alaska, which depicts a number of
upright, broken-off stumps stripped of most of their
branches. The taller stumps poke out above the alluvial
mud. This is the result of natural processes accompanying
river course change. A couple of pages later we find a
photograph showing how trees can be buried fairly quickly
in another way. In this case, volcanic ash has partially
buried a forest whose trees are mostly reduced to
broken-off stumps stripped of their branches. Continuing
volcanic eruptions over a period of years (dead trees last
a long time!) and the interaction with wind would create
variations in the strata which finally bury the stumps.

In some cases, burial might well be less than
instantaneous. In the San Francisco area fossils of cedar
and redwood (dated at 23,000 years) are found in place 20
feet below present sea level. This may be due to a rising
sea level from melting ice-caps. (Encyclopedia
Americana, 1978 Annual [Geology].) A similar find
exists off the coast of Japan where remnants of a forest of
willows and alders are found in 70 feet of water. They are
some 10,000 years old (Chorlton, 1984,
p.90).

Thus, we have polystrate fossils in the making, without
the aid of Noah's flood.

As to the 80-foot whale, standing on its tail, which was
found by the GREFCO Corporation near Lompoc, that being an
outstanding example of a polystrate fossil, you may rest
assured that geologists do not assume that it remained on
its tail until slowly buried by diatoms! More likely it
died a natural death, sank to the bottom for a time, and
was buried in some kind of underwater avalanche which left
it in its vertical position. Here's what a Christian
geologist had to say:

Before the discovery of rapid, submarine sediment flows
the circumstances under which these animals were buried was
very much a mystery...

...it is logical to conclude that the Lompoc diatom beds
were deposited naturally on the ocean floor, and that
sometime before the period of tectonic activity which
finally raised them to an elevation above sea level the
earthquakes in that area triggered at least one large
sediment slide and flow which overwhelmed and buried the
animals that were down-slope from where the slide began. As
pointed out in the early parts of this section on rapid
burial, we now know of large sediment flows in various
parts of the world which apparently had all of the
characteristics necessary for overwhelming and burying both
swift and large marine animals.

Thus, the mystery of Lompoc poses no problems for
standard-brand geology. However, we can do even better.
Thanks to that modern wonder of wonders, the Internet, a
complete accounting of the Lompoc whale mystery is only
keystrokes away! Darby South has thoroughly researched all
the details at <http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/polystrate/whale.html>,
a web page devoted to just that subject. His material comes
directly from those folks at the Los Angeles Museum of
Natural History who were involved in the excavation.

The original source of our story appears to be K. M.
Russel, who wrote an article in Chemical and Engineering
News (Oct. 4, 1976). Some "facts" were wrong from the
start. To begin with, the whale fossil was not buried
vertically. The angle was more like 40-50 degrees from the
horizonal. Most importantly, the skeleton lay parallel to
the bedding plane, meaning that the site was, more or less,
once a level sea floor. The discovery of hardground‡
horizons within this strata make it clear that for long
periods of time this was, indeed, the ocean floor and not a
quick load of sediment from Noah's flood. The fossil was
buried by the same kind of diatomites that accumulated in
deep bays and basins along the Pacific Coast during Miocene
times.

These sediments lack any sedimentary structures that
would indicate catastrophic deposition. Rather, the strata
exhibit laminations indicative of slow accumulation on an
anoxic bay bottom.

Indeed, a partially buried, fully connected
(articulated) whale skeleton is slowly being buried even
now off the California coast! It was discovered about 10
years ago by a deep-sea submersible.

Plate tectonics wrote the final chapter. As the
Transverse Ranges were being folded and pushed up, the sea
floor on which our whale had settled and, in time, had been
buried, was now subject to folding. As a result, that whale
skeleton became tilted along with the strata on which it
lay. Now that we have the real facts, we can see
that this whale fossil is actually a good reason for
rejecting Noah's flood as the source of the geologic
column! Funny, how creationists often shoot themselves in
the foot while trying to attack conventional geology!

In order to collect the point, creationists must show
that polystrate fossils exist where they shouldn't be. That
involves a lot more work than conjuring up interesting
pictures and local stories accompanied by much
speculation.

b) Missing
Layers

Missing layers are no problem at all once one
understands that the geologic column is an abstract
conceptual tool, an ideal reference frame, which gives
order to the overall geologic record. It's like a
dictionary listing the more important English words. No one
expects that every one of those words will be present in
some history book! Neither does the geologist expect any
particular locality to exhibit all the known strata.

Has it occurred to you that the thick strata now being
formed in the oceans off our coasts are not forming on the
mainland? Thus, we have one cause of our missing strata,
namely that it might not have been laid down in the first
place! The late Jurassic, for instance, was not laid down
everywhere; where land existed no sediment was being added,
except in lakes, dune accumulations, and in certain other
situations. Another possibility is erosion. Given enough
time, erosion will strip away exposed strata. Large parts
of Canada have been, with the help of glaciers, stripped
all the way down to the Precambrian rock! Talk about
missing layers!

Again, missing strata present no problem for geologists.
The geologic column has no missing strata because it
is a catalog of all known strata; it is not a
physical locality but a chronological compilation of
all localities, an ideal reference frame.

Information about the most famous thrust fault and
creationist claims about it.

c) Out of
Order and Reversed Layers

"Overturning of strata is associated with intense
folding in tectonic belts formed by continental collision."
(Strahler,
1987, p.384) Anyone who makes the most elementary
observations of mountain strata will note a high degree of
folding. Anyone who has studied a decent geology text, a
result of numerous years of careful work by thousands of
trained geologists who made numerous field trips to
assorted mountains and valleys in order to chip away at the
earth's old rind, will appreciate just how messy things can
get.

Nevertheless, except in the very worst cases of mangled
rock, there is almost always a pattern to it which holds
the key to its history. The Grand Morgon in the French
Alps, for instance, has a recumbent fold giving a strata
sequence like D-C-B-A-B-C-D. Common sense suggests that the
strata have been folded, and careful mapping bears that
out. Footprints, mudcracks, ripple marks, cross
laminations, and various other clues found on the surfaces
of bedding planes often confirm beyond any shadow of a
doubt that a given sequence of strata have been
overturned.

A strata sequence of B-C-A-B-C, to give another example,
suggests that the strata A-B-C had been shoved upon itself
after breaking along a front, and that stratum A- had
eroded away. A geologist studying the site would look for
evidence of an overthrust at the boundary of C-A. To hear
creationists complain, you'd think the strata were shuffled
like a deck of cards without a clue as to which way is up!
Far from it! A careful mapping of an area is usually enough
to unravel the mystery or at least point to a likely
solution. Strahler (1987, Chapter 40)
provides an excellent discussion on the nature of
overturned strata, including a thorough discussion of the
Lewis Overthrust.

When geologists look at areas which haven't been
seriously disturbed for great ages, such as the Grand
Canyon, they always find the strata in the right order.
Some strata may be missing, but the order will be correct.
Such studies soon made it abundantly clear to the early
geologists that the earth's strata has a very specific
order. Thus arose the concept of the geologic column.

Let me also add that radiometric dating supports only
one order for the geologic column, the same
order found in undisturbed areas. Radiometric dating, where
applicable, also clearly identifies reversed strata and
other anomalies. Such anomalies, as already noted, can
often be identified by extended mapping of an area.

More evidence illustrating the correct order of the
geologic column may be had by mapping the bottom
sediments of the Atlantic Ocean according to their geologic
ages. If we move away from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, either
towards the United States or North Africa, we move
successively from the recent sediments of the Quaternary
period to the Pliocene, Miocene, Oligocene, Eocene, and
Paleocene epochs, which make up the Tertiary period, to the
late, middle, and early Cretaceous periods, and finally
into the late Jurassic period just beyond the continental
shelves of either coast (McGeary and
Plummer, 1994, p.79). The fact that these sediments are
in perfect textbook order is hardly surprising since the
Atlantic sea floor has been continually spreading apart
since the late Jurassic. As new sea floor emerges and
spreads outward it picks up the most recent sediment, which
means that the farther away we look from the Mid-Atlantic
Ridge the older the sediment is in the bottom layer.
We should, therefore, find the whole textbook sequence (as
far as it goes) in its proper order as the sea floor is a
perfect place for the continuous deposition of sediment,
and that is exactly what we do find!

A similar story holds for the East Pacific Ridge, which
runs roughly south of central Mexico. If we move northwest
towards the Marianas Islands (south of Japan) we cross the
same order of geologic epochs and periods as we did
in the Atlantic! Again, this is not surprising since the
Pacific sea floor is spreading out from that ridge, meaning
that it would also record the true order of
sediment deposition. Naturally, it will agree with the
order found in the Atlantic. Further confirmation, if
needed, can be found in the Mid Indian Ocean Ridge (McGeary and
Plummer, 1994, p.79). There is really no question
whatsoever as to the proper order of the world's major
strata. It is a sign of sheer desperation that today's
creationists would even try to challenge such a
solidly established fact as the geologic column.

The text of the 1986 Robert Schadewald article which
the author cites in this section.

d)
Misplaced Fossils

The creationist claim of misplaced fossils, i.e.,
fossils (or manufactured items) in the "wrong" strata, is
scarcely more than a collection of dime-a-dozen rumors that
are completely lacking in scientific documentation. The
one, shining exception, the supposed man-tracks along the
Paluxy River in Texas, which had enough "substance" to be
the subject of a creationist movie, has proved to be an
embarrassing bust. It is an embarrassment to all but the
most die-hard, head-in-the-sand creationists. A thorough
discussion of all the claims for "misplaced" fossils and
manufactured items would fill an entire book. We can only
scratch the surface.

Carl Baugh's hammer: This hammer was supposedly
dug out of Ordovician strata. In fact, it is a 19th century
miner's hammer of recent American historical style.

Carl Baugh is something of an embarrassment even to
creationists in that he is continually finding things in
the Paluxy River area which just ain't so! Perhaps you've
heard of "Glen Rose Man" which was created from a fish's
tooth! That was one of Baugh's productions. As for the
hammer, which was actually found by others near London,
Texas in the 1930s, supposedly in an Ordovician stone
concretion, it merely came into Baugh's possession.

The stone concretion is real, and it looks impressive to
someone unfamiliar with geological processes. How could a
modern artifact be stuck in Ordovician rock? The answer is
that the concretion itself is not Ordovician. Minerals in
solution can harden around an intrusive object dropped in a
crack or simply left on the ground if the source rock (in
this case, reportedly Ordovician) is chemically soluble.
This is analogous to stalactites incorporating recent
objects in their paths as they grow. The rapidity with
which concretions and similar types of stone can form is
evident in soil caliche development. "Rapid formation of
limestone has been shown in coral atolls in the Pacific
where World War II artifacts have been found in the matrix"
(McKusick and Shinn, 1980).

Given the above data, evolutionists are scarcely
troubled by Carl Baugh's hammer.

Paluxy River Footprints: For years creationists
claimed that human footprints could be found side by side
with dinosaur prints at this site near Glen Rose, Texas.
The complete story of creationist doings in and around the
Paluxy River is, with one or two notable exceptions, a
classic study of wishful thinking gone awry. Few studies
shed more light on the creationist mentality than does the
history of the Paluxy River "mantracks." Richard Tierney
(1986) captures some of the flavor of that story which is
too long to tell here. A running account can be found in
various issues of Creation/Evolution.

There was even a seductive creationist movie,
Footprints in Stone, which "documented" the
"mantracks" found along the Paluxy River. Laurie Godfrey
(1981) showed
that the film was pseudoscientific. The "man prints" in the
film had been darkened, with either shellac or oil, making
them look far more human than they would have otherwise (Godfrey, 1981,
p.24). In some cases the "man print" was a portion of a
larger footprint which was probably made by a dinosaur. "In
other cases the shellac seemed to connect erosional
depressions." (Godfrey, 1981,
p.24). One of Godfrey's students wrote to Eden Films to ask
whether or not duplicates of their casts could be purchased
for firsthand examination. Their answer was "no, not yet,"
leaving Laurie Godfrey wondering "Why not yet?"
Perhaps a careful examination of such casts would have
exposed the wishful thinking, expressed in shellac
outlines, that went on. Dr. Coombs, a vertebrate
paleontologist who has studied dinosaur tracks, and Dr.
Gomberg, an expert on the anatomy of the primate foot, both
watched the film and concluded that they saw no genuine
human tracks except those made during a modern
demonstration. They concluded that some of the prints shown
were genuine in the sense that some kind of animal made
them, but the details from the film were too poor to draw
any conclusions.

It is fortunate that some Texas paleontologists have
examined firsthand the Glen Rose tracks. Wann Langston,
Jr., pointed out that some of the "man prints" have
distinct claw marks emanating from what the creationists
call their "heels." (The creationists apparently reversed
the direction of travel for these critters.) Langston also
noted that one of the most widely reproduced footprint
photos of Paluxy man shows a portion of a poor print of a
tridactyl dinosaur; this may be clear, however, only to
someone who, having studied the anatomy of the dinosaur
foot, knows what to look for. Milne [1981] makes the same
point using photographs of in situ "man prints"
taken directly from creationist literature. These "man
prints" are nothing more than dinosaur toe impressions,
selectively highlighted, with sand obscuring places where
the rest of the dinosaur's foot might show. ... The
existence of claw marks on some of the best series of
"giant man prints" is now acknowledged by creationist John
D. Morris, son of Henry Morris and author of Tracking
Those Incredible Dinosaurs and the People Who Knew
Them. This includes the McFall track, which is shown in
Footprints in Stone.

After commenting on the film's unbalanced testimonials
from supposed "experts," a group of commentators that did
not include a single vertebrate paleontologist or
paleoichnologist (an expert on the tracks of extinct
critters), Laurie Godfrey concluded: "In short, the film is
a distorted pseudodocumentary, which belongs in the realm
of science fiction rather than science."

Before long others had visited the site. Issue XV of
Creation/Evolution is devoted to the Paluxy River
footprints. In it the studies/reports of R. J. Hastings, L.
R. Godfrey, J. R. Cole, and S. D. Schafersman are
devastating. "Man tracks" turned out to be erosional
features and partial dinosaur prints. A study of stride
length added additional support to the obvious. Nor has
previous paleontological studies of the area offered any
hope for creationists. Fossils typical of the Cretaceous
were found in the Cretaceous strata. Mammoth remains were
found above that strata in recent
deposits, but never embedded in the Cretaceous. The
Ryals Trail, the McFall site, Taylor's Trail, and other
items were examined and discounted as human trackways or
footprints. The details of these studies are too numerous
to repeat here.

In September of 1984 Glen Kuban and Ronnie Hastings
noticed that coloration patterns, due to secondary
infilling of the original depressions, patterns previously
noticed on only some of the Taylor site tracks, now
appeared on tracks of all four alleged human trails. The
coloration clearly brought out the dinosaurian nature of
the "human" footprints! A few creationists became so
hysterical that they actually hinted that evolutionists
might have painted in these markings! Taylor was so
impressed with Kuban's guided tour of these problems that
he withdrew the film Footprints in Stone from public
circulation! (Schadewald,
1986, p.6) The Institute for Creation Research
halfheartedly backed off without giving Glen Kuban any
credit for his work, which blew the lid off the whole
affair. (Schadewald,
1986, p.7).

In the March 1986 Acts and Facts, an anonymous
author (presumably Henry Morris) defends John Morris'
half-hearted retraction in an unapologetic apologetic.
Regarding John Morris' hints about fraudulent colorations,
the anonymous author of "Following Up on the Paluxy
Mystery" notes that "no evidence of fraud has been found,
and some hints of these dinosaur toe stains have now
possibly been discerned on photos taken when the prints in
question were originally discovered." Glen Kuban, who
pointed out these colorations in the early photos, is not
mentioned at all. Indeed, the original creationist
interpretation of the trackways is characterized as "not
only a valid interpretation but arguably the best
interpretation of the data available at that time." The
"close-minded" evolutionists who have criticized the Paluxy
tracks are mentioned only with sneer and smear.

Another creationist organization with a heavy stake in
the Paluxy River footprints is the Bible-Science
Association. The Reverend Paul Bartz, editor of the
Bible-Science Newsletter, has hotly defended
Footprints in Stone and editorially sneered at the
work of the "Raiders." After Films for Christ withdrew
Footprints in Stone, I watched the Bible-Science
Newsletter for a reaction. Nothing. The BSA
headquarters are in Minneapolis, and BSA officials are
active in the Twin Cities Creation-Science Association. I
attended TCCSA meetings to hear what the BSA had to say in
that forum. Nothing. I privately showed BSA field director
Bill Overn an unpublished manuscript on the tracks. About a
month later, the BSA finally broke its silence.

The statement made no mention of Kuban's work or of the
contribution that the "Raiders of the Lost Tracks" had
made. Schadewald referred to it as "whitewash as usual from
the Bible-Science Association," but he held out hope that
they would yet come clean. Meanwhile, as if nature intended
to add insult to injury, the colorations were becoming more
and more distinct as the years rolled by! The "human"
footprints were turning into dinosaur footprints! Glen
Kuban (1986, pp.15-17) discusses the coloration at some
length, noting that:

The colorations provide strong confirmation that all the
trackways on the Taylor site are dinosaurian. Even before
these colorations became more prominent, the tracks did not
merit a human interpretation.

The upshot of all this is that many creationists, at
least the more sophisticated ones, have had the good sense
to abandon this argument. (Hopefully that includes Dr.
Hovind.) The die-hards, of course, continue to dream of
finding their Holy Grail along the Paluxy River, a find
which will magically banish evolution along with 120 years
of scientific study. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if a few
of them are still poking around the Paluxy River even
today. Thus, from time to time, we may
expect pathetic attempts to rejuvenate the Paluxy River
juggernaut which had sunk of late. Stay tuned!

Trilobites and Humans: Dr. Hovind has a slide of
a trilobite which was "stepped on" by a human!

This looks suspiciously like one of the bogus Meister
tracks (Conrad,
1981, pp.30-33). Mr. William J. Meister's specimen,
found in 1968 near Antelope Springs, Utah, was offered as
evidence that a trilobite was stepped on by a human wearing
a boot with a heel. In a 1973 debate Reverend Boswell
claimed that it had been tested by three laboratories
around the world!

Sounds pretty impressive, huh? In fact, it is nothing
more than a slab of Wheeler shale that has a fragment
spalled off in the form of a footprint, which reveals a
trilobite, Erathia kingi. To fully appreciate that
fact, which has been established beyond any reasonable
doubt, you should read Conrad's account.

The Olmo, Castenedolo, and Calaveras Skulls:
Creationists have made some interesting claims about these
fossils. In his book, the Handy Dandy Evolution
Refuter, Robert Kofahl stated that the above fossils
were essentially modern and yet were found buried in very
old strata. In The

Creationist Explanation, Kofahl and Kelly Segraves
suggest that the above fossils were relegated to dusty
museum closets and forgotten because they didn't fit the
evolutionary scheme. Scientific Creationism, one of
Henry Morris' classic works, states that the Castenedolo
and Olmo skulls were found in undisturbed Pliocene strata
in Italy. The Bible Science Newsletter had this to
say (from: Conrad,
1982, p.15).

Another example of how people react when the evidence
does not agree with their philosophical position is the
treatment which the Castenedolo skull received. This
totally modern type skull was found in Pliocene strata,
dated at one-half million years. Because this discovery did
not agree with preconceived ideas, it is rarely mentioned
in textbooks or other literature. (p.5)

As the professional creationist watcher might suspect,
there was more to the story. Conrad (1982, p.16) fills
us in with a quote from the 1957 issue of Fossil
Men, by Boule and Vallois:

The bones from Castenedolo, near Brescia in Italy,
belong to several skeletons of men, women, and children and
were found on various occasions in a shelly bed of sand and
clay, of marine origin and of Pliocene age. In 1899, the
discovery of a new human skeleton was the subject of an
official report by Professor Issel, who then observed that
the various fossils from this deposit were all impregnated
with salt, with the sole exception of the human fossils...
It seems certain that at Castenedolo we are dealing with
more or less recent burials.

(Boule and Vallois, page 107)

Ernest Conrad goes on to inform us that in 1965 collagen
tests demonstrated "that the Castenedolo materials were
intrusive burials into the Astian clays." Radiocarbon
dating in 1969 by the British Museum placed the cranial
fossils in the Holocene. We're dealing with relatively
recent fossils and they present no problem for
evolution.

The creationists are also mistaken about the Olmo
skull:

In the case of the Olmo materials, the creationists are
in error from the beginning. The Olmo skull fits perfectly
into the evolutionary chronology and is a legitimate
specimen, for here we find a modern skull cap in
upper-Pleistocene gravels--exactly where it ought to
be.

Based on various lab tests developed by the British
Museum, it was determined that the Olmo skull was probably
from the upper Pleistocene. It was relatively old, but it
presents no embarrassment for evolution. It came from the
Upper Paleolithic cultural period.

The Calaveras skull turned out to be a hoax! If you wish
to read the details, see Conrad (1982, pp.17-18). Thus,
Morris, Kofahl, and Segraves were taken in by a hoax! Take
note, those of you who speak of Nebraska Man!

Neanderthal Man in Louisiana?: Why is it that
skeptics like to see such claims documented in good,
scientific journals? Take the case of the 11-foot
Neanderthal Man, whose fossil was supposedly unearthed in
Louisiana. This case, which was researched by Paul V.
Heinrich, was sent to me by Ed Babinski via the
Internet.

In 1951 the Morning Advocate stated:

A gravel contractor unearthed parts of a human skeleton
35 feet from the surface of the ground and an LSU geologist
said today the bones may be prehistoric. ... J. W. West, of
LSU and several student scouts viewed the bones but called
their finds too inconclusive to make an official
statement.

(Morning Advocate, January 9,
1951)

The above story was distributed all over the U. S. by
the Associated Press. The State Times (now defunct) put it
this way:

Sicily Island, Jan. 9, (UP) - Anthropologists and
geologists studied today a collection of bones from a
gravel pit that may show that the Neanderthal Man - an
11-foot tall ancestor of modern man - lived in North
America about 50,000 years ago.

If so, it may cause revolutionary changes in
anthropological thinking. ...

(State Times, Jan. 9, 1951)

Thus, we seem to have evidence for 11-foot giants
roaming about Louisiana as documented by bones from the
Plio-Pleistocene Citronell Formation within Louisiana.
Unlike similar creationist stories, which are often
extremely vague, this account comes with details. The
specific geological formation is identified along with at
least one of the scientists involved. We are even told that
the site is about 5 miles west of the small town of Sicily
Island. As Paul Heinrich noted, "Had the bones not been
donated to and catalogued in the LSU Museum, another
anomalous fossil human skeleton would have appeared on the
scene." Creationists would have had a field day! "... shows
like 'The Mysterious Origins of Man' and books like
'Forbidden Archaeology' would have had an example of 'human
remains' of Plio-Pleistocene age being found in Louisiana
and ignored by myopic paleontologists and
archaeologists."

As it happened, those bones were donated to the LSU
Museum and catalogued. Several years later they were
examined in detail and proven to be those of a bear (Arata and
Harmann, 1966). The newspapers and wire services lost
interest and dropped the story. Newspapers are written to
entertain their readers, not to set facts straight.

Dr.
Hovind (G5): The assumed age of a sample will dictate which
radiometric dating method is used. One method will only
give results for a young age; another will only give
results for a very old age. Thus, the assumed age of a
sample dictates the method which, in turn, gives the
assumed age!

G5. That seems to be Dr. Hovind's complaint, one
that has been made by other creationists. Are we to believe
that the world's leading geologists cannot recognize an
elementary case of circular reasoning? Is that the
real explanation behind their choice of isotopes in
radiometric dating? Of course not! Those
creationists arguing thus have been grievously blinded by
their religious prejudice, against which even a Ph.D. is no
defense.

The problem lies with Dr. Hovind and many other
creationists who haven't the foggiest idea how
radiometric dating works! They are the last people
who should be criticizing it. The explanation is so easy
that quotations from specialists won't even be
necessary.

If you test an old sample with a radiometric method
geared to young samples, you would find that all the
"parent" radioactive atoms have decayed. Your conclusion
would be that the sample has a minimum age which
corresponds to the smallest amount of the "parent" nuclide
you can detect. You would not conclude that the sample was
"young."

If you test a young sample with a radiometric method
geared to old samples, you would find that none of the
"parent" radioactive atoms have decayed. Your conclusion
would be that the sample has a maximum age which
corresponds to the smallest amount of the "daughter"
nuclide which you can detect. You would not conclude that
the sample was "old."

The realities of the laboratory, of course, mean that
there are no sharp cut-off points. Instead, there will be
ranges, and at the extremes the results can only give a
rough maximum or minimum age. Dates landing in that zone
would be considered unreliable.

It's a little like weighing a flea on a truck scales or
weighing a brick on a scales designed to weigh envelopes.
If the brick depresses the envelope scales all the way to
the highest mark, you conclude that the brick weighs at
least that much. If the flea doesn't depress the scales at
the truck stop, you conclude that it weighs less than a
weight which barely moves those scales.

Consequently, the choice of scales will not dictate the
result. Of course, if the truck scales isn't perfectly
calibrated, you might get a 50-pound flea! Similarly, the
envelope scales would indicate that the brick only weighs a
few ounces. However, no one who is familiar with such
scales would take those readings too seriously. A similar
situation holds for radiometric dating. Readings falling in
the minimum or maximum zones are not taken too seriously.
Thus, there is no problem.